Can you imagine seeing a car advert that's five minutes long in 2014? An outpouring of disaffection on Twitter would surely result after about forty seconds as our short attention spans struggled to cope with such a lengthy commercial.
And in all honesty this launch film for the Peugeot 205 GTI could probably be about half the length, endearing and enjoyable though it is. Or is that the short attention span again? It essentially involves a rather suave gent driving a lovely little GTI around the desert for quite a while, adeptly showing off its lift-off oversteer qualities before narrowly missing a train and then reaching the edge of a cliff... we'll leave you in suspense as to the end as it really is quite special.
As is often the case, the older days of car advertising provide a refreshing alternative to modern marketing. There's absolutely no mention of efficiency or prices or safety in this 311 seconds of film. It just says 'here's our pretty new car being driven very fast and here's its name in large font' with nothing more. Peugeot is confident you'll want it with nothing more than a visual display. Which we do actually. To the classifieds!
[N.B. Press image used rather than screengrab because, well, the quality of the vid isn't great and it would look a bit naff].
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